JIRA 5.0 Beta 3 Release Notes

1 November 2011

JIRA 5.0 Beta 3 (a.k.a 5.0 milestone 8 or 'm8') is a public development release leading up to JIRA 5.0. A Beta release is a preliminary release leading up to the official release of a JIRA version. Beta releases are a snapshot of our work in progress and provide an advance preview of new features to the general public. JIRA plugin developers can also use Beta releases to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release. For all production use and testing of JIRA, please use the latest official release.

The Atlassian team is proud to bring you the JIRA 5.0 Beta 3 release. Thank you for your feedback during the recent EAP releases and please keep providing it here.

(info) Upgrading to JIRA 5.0 Beta 3:

Overview

The focus of JIRA 5.0 is to help connect people, teams and other applications together. JIRA 5.0 helps connect people and teams by allowing them to share issues and search results and mention other team members in an issue. People and teams are better connected to other applications with Remote 'Issue Links' to other JIRA sites or web page URLs and Activity Streams that span all your linked Atlassian applications.

JIRA 5.0 also introduces a large number of improvements for developers to help connect JIRA to other applications, including the introduction of:

  • New REST APIs to manage every facet of an issue,
  • New Remote 'Issue Link' and Activity Stream features, specifically for integration with other applications, and
  • A stable Java API for JIRA.

Main Highlights:

Remote 'Issue Links'

Sharing Issues and 'Mentions'

Create and Edit Issues Rapidly

  • Create links to JIRA issues on another JIRA site
  • Create links to any URL
  • Create links via JIRA's Java or REST API
  • Share issues quickly with other users
  • Mention a user in an issue comment
  • JIRA uses autocomplete whenever you 'share' or 'mention' a user
  • Create and edit issues rapidly in a dialog box
  • Create multiple issues in succession
  • Customise to show fields you use most often

Do not use in production

Beta releases should not be used in production environments as they are not officially supported.

Please also take note of the following information:

  • Beta releases are not safe— Beta releases are snapshots of the ongoing JIRA development process. As such:
    • While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of testing as a full release.
    • Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before the next full release.
  • No upgrade path — Because Beta releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade path between Beta releases, or from any Beta to the eventual final release. Thus, any data you store in a JIRA Beta release may not be able to be migrated to a future JIRA release.

Highlights


Remote 'Issue Links' (improved in Beta 3)

The Remote 'Issue Links' feature provides a powerful way to link JIRA issues to items external to your JIRA installation, residing on external applications.

Along with a Java and REST API to add these links, end users can also:

  • Add a link from a JIRA issue to another issue on a different JIRA installation or site using application links with trusted applications or OAuth-based authentication (improved in Beta 3).
  • Add a reciprocal link from a JIRA issue to another issue on a different JIRA installation or site using application links.
  • Add a link from a JIRA issue to any web page URL, such as a page of documentation, a technical note, or any other page on another web site.

For more information about this feature, see JIRA Remote Issue Links.

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Sharing Issues and 'Mentions' (improved in Beta 3)

Screenshot: Sharing an issue with other users

Screenshot: Mentioning a user in an issue comment

Want to let others know about a JIRA issue or a list of search results quickly? Simply visit a JIRA issue or a list of issues on the issue navigator and then do either of the following:

  • Click the new 'Share' button at the top-right (or type 's') and specify JIRA users (based on their names or user names) or any email address of people you want to share the page with. Add an optional note and then click 'Share'. 

    (info) JIRA users specified in the 'User name or email' field will receive details of the issue or a link to a list of issues in an email message (sent to the addresses registered with their JIRA user accounts). The message's subject line will indicate that the person who used this feature 'shared' the issue(s) with them.

  • In an issue comment or the issue's description field (new in Beta 3), type the '@' symbol and begin typing the name or username of a JIRA user. Select the appropriate user from the dropdown. You can do this with multiple users and after submitting the form, those users will be notified that you mentioned them in the comment or the issue's description field.

    (info) Users will receive details of the issue in an email message (sent to the addresses registered with their JIRA user accounts). The message's subject line will indicate that the person who used this feature 'mentioned' them on that issue.

(info) Users required the 'Browser User' global permission to access the 'Share' button or the autocomplete feature when 'mentioning' a user. However, if you know the username of a JIRA user, you can still mention them

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Create and Edit Issues Rapidly (improved in Beta 3)

JIRA 5.0 provides a rapid and customisable dialog box for creating and editing JIRA issues and sub-tasks (new in Beta 3). This feature replaces the Create and Edit Issue forms.

The Create/Edit Issue dialog boxes show all available fields by default. However, you can quickly remove or re-add fields via the 'Configure Fields' button at the top-right of the dialog box. JIRA remembers your last set of field choices, giving you a personally customised dialog box that presents you with your most commonly edited fields whenever you create or edit an issue.

If you select the 'Create another' check box, JIRA will create your issue and automatically pre-populate a new 'Create Issue' dialog box with your previous options, whilst leaving the 'Summary' field blank. This allows you to rapidly create a series of related issues with similar options. Note that this feature does not carry across any attachments that were attached to your previously created issue.

Consistent with JIRA's existing keyboard shortcuts, type 'c' to access the create issue dialog box or 'e' from a currently selected issue on the Issue Navigator or 'View Issue' page to access the edit dialog box for that issue.

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More Enhancements to JQL — New "CHANGED" Operator and "WAS" Improvements

Enhancements were introduced in JIRA 4.4 that allowed you to search the history of an issue's Assignee and Reporter fields.

In JIRA 5.0, JQL supports the new "CHANGED" operator, which can accept the optional predicates "FROM", "TO", "ON", "DURING", "BEFORE", "AFTER" and "BY".

For example, the following JQL query:

status changed FROM "In QA Review" to "QA Rejected" BY freddo BEFORE endOfWeek() AFTER startOfWeek()

Will find any issues whose Status field value was at some point "In QA Review" but changed to "QA Rejected", by user 'freddo', and after the start and before the end of the current week.

You can use complex queries such as these to generate the 'Single Level Group By Report' in the screenshot above, which shows grouping by 'Team'.

The "CHANGED" operator can be used on the Status, Assignee, Priority, Reporter, Resolution and Fix Version fields.

The "WAS" operator can now be used on the Fix Version field too. For example, the following JQL query:

fixVersion WAS 4.4

Will find any issues whose Fix Version field was at some point (or currently is) set to 4.4.

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Activity Streams Now Show External Content


Screenshot: Activity stream gadget showing activity
from other Atlassian applications

Screenshot: Activity stream gadget showing activity
from non-Atlassian applications

We are expanding the Activity Stream features introduced in JIRA 4.4 with:

  • The ability to show external activity from another Atlassian application (such as Confluence, FishEye/Crucible and Bamboo) via an Application Link.
  • The ability to combine this external activity into an Activity Stream gadget on a JIRA dashboard.
  • An API for creating entries in activity streams from remote applications via the REST API or locally via Java.

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details.

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Manage Other Users' Shared Filters and Dashboards

JIRA administrators have the ability to change the ownership of or delete other user's shared filters and dashboards. A shared filter or dashboard is a filter/dashboard created (and hence, owned) by a user, which the user has then shared with others.

Since JIRA only allows the editing or modification of shared filters/dashboards by their owners, this new JIRA feature is especially helpful in situations where a user has left an organisation, but the shared filters or dashboards they created continue to be used by others within the organisation.

(info) Only users with the Create Shared Objects global permission can share their filters and dashboards with other JIRA users.

You can access these features by selecting 'Administration' > 'Users' > 'Shared Filters' or 'Shared Dashboards' (or using the keyboard shortcut 'g' + 'g' + start typing 'shared filters' or 'shared dashboard').

On the 'Shared Filters' or 'Shared Dashboard' pages, you can search for any shared filters/dashboards, or use the cog icon to change the owner of a shared filter/dashboard to another user or delete the shared filter/dashboard.

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Administration User Interface Improvements (improved in Beta 3)

Following on with improvements to the Administration User Interface (UI) in JIRA 4.4, JIRA 5.0 will provide further improvements to the Administration UI by converting various forms and pages in this area to convenient dialog boxes.

In addition to the dialog box for adding a new user, the 'Attachments' and 'Workflows' pages (the latter of which is improved in Beta 3) have been redesigned and the forms associated with these pages have been converted into convenient dialog boxes too.

For example, the form for editing attachment settings is now a dialog box, which is accessed by clicking 'Edit Settings' on the 'Attachments' page of JIRA's Administration area.

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REST API Improvements (improved in Beta 3)

JIRA's REST API is undergoing a significant number of changes and improvements to provide the following:

  • Create new issues.
  • Retrieve metadata for creating new issues and editing existing ones.
  • Delete existing issues and their subtasks.
  • Create remote 'issue links'.
  • Retrieve metadata from your favourite filters and dashboards (new in Beta 3).
  • Retrieve metadata about your permissions (new in Beta 3).
  • Almost all system fields and JIRA's built-in custom field types are supported (improved in Beta 3).

(info) Please also note that the we have changed the api-version name component of URLs for JIRA's REST API calls from '2.0.alpha1' to simply '2' (or 'latest' to use the latest REST API version available with your version of JIRA).

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details. We also have a series of REST API Tutorials to help you get started using our new REST API improvements.

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Java API Improvements

JIRA's Java API is undergoing a significant number of changes and improvements to provide the following:

  • More stability and reliability with future versions of JIRA.
  • Removal of deprecated OSUser classes.
  • Removal of deprecated portlets (replaced by gadgets in JIRA 4.0) and their related APIs.

Refer to the Preparing for JIRA 5.0 section of our developer documentation site for more details.

(info) Please also be aware that the JIRA's Java API is likely to undergo a rapid number of changes from one JIRA 5.0 EAP release to the next.

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Performance Improvements

Lucene 3.2 is now fully integrated into JIRA. Initial benchmarking shows performance improvements across a number of JIRA features.

The 'Activity' tabs on the 'View Issue' page are now loaded in the background when this page is first viewed, allowing the information on these tabs to be displayed more rapidly.

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New Troubleshooting and Debugging Tools

JIRA 5.0 adds several tools to help Administrators debug the configuration of their instance.

  • A number of email debugging tools are now provided to System Administrators in the new 'Logging and Profiling' page under 'Troubleshooting and Support'
    • Enable or disable mail logging
    • Turn debug mail logging on or off
    • Configure a logging level for a new package easily in the default loggers section.
  • For testing and troubleshooting LDAP connections, much more comprehensive testing is now provided, including basic connections, user retrieval, user membership, group retrieval, group membership and authentication.

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New Email Handler Wizard

JIRA 5.0 incorporates a new email handler wizard that greatly simplifies the process of configuring incoming mail handlers for creating issues or comments from email messages.

You no longer have to configure a JIRA service and enter in a complex string of Handler parameters for your email handler. Instead you configure your email handler through a convenient wizard.

Improvements have been made to the layout of JIRA's mail configuration options. The configuration options in the 'Mail Servers' tab has been separated into two tabs — one for 'Outgoing Mail' (SMTP) and another for 'Incoming Mail' (POP/IMAP) configuration. The configuration options in the 'Mail Handlers' tab has been incorporated into the 'Outgoing Mail' tab.

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New Plugin to Try Out — Remote Issue Copying

This new JIRA 5.0-compatible feature currently under development as a plugin, allows you to copy issues from one JIRA site to another.

After establishing an Application Link between your JIRA site and another, a new 'Remote Copy' action will become available when viewing an issue.

(info) While this action is available to everyone by default, it can be restricted to a particular group.

You will be prompted to map field values by field names for JIRA's built-in (system) fields and/or to configure default values for required fields.

(info) You will require the appropriate permissions to set the field value on the target site.

Custom fields are generally supported, although so far, we have only provided a mapper for the SelectCFType custom field type. Supporting more custom fields is a matter of writing more mappers (which we intend to make pluggable for the final JIRA 5.0 release).

The Remote Issue Copy feature is currently available as a plugin that needs to be installed on each JIRA server you wish to copy issues between. You also need to configure the following before you can copy issues between your JIRA sites:

  1. An Application Link between your JIRA sites — see Adding an Application Link.
  2. One or more Project Links between JIRA projects across these JIRA sites — Adding Project Links between Applications.

(warning) The Remote Issue Copying plugin is not yet bundled with JIRA. However, you can download it from from the following link:

https://maven.atlassian.com/content/groups/public/com/atlassian/cpji/cpji-jira-plugin/2.1-beta1/cpji-jira-plugin-2.1-beta1.jar

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Other Enhancements and Fixes

For a list of more issues resolved in JIRA 5.0 so far, click here. Some notable fixes in JIRA 5.0 Beta 3 include:

  • A critical issue (JRA-25914) which may cause data corruption in a high-load environment was fixed.

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Last modified on Nov 21, 2011

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